


Type III

by Bitenomnom



Series: Mathematical Proof [23]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Pining, Reunion, Twenty Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:35:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitenomnom/pseuds/Bitenomnom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been, by Sherlock’s estimate (he could not tell precisely—shades drawn, so amount of light outside and therefore time of day unknown, extended amounts of sleep disorienting) sixteen days since John had returned. Seventeen was also a distinct possibility. His mobile was nowhere to be found.</p><p>	John was asleep beside him: that was exactly where John was supposed to be. John had returned and everything was right again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Type III

**Author's Note:**

> Another story for the related group currently consisting of [Touching](http://archiveofourown.org/works/515273), [Interaction](http://archiveofourown.org/works/517933), and [Parallel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/528616), since what we were talking about in class today had a lot to do with interaction and I felt like this rather angsty group of stories needed a little payoff. XD Unfortunately I'm also ridiculously tired, so I must warn you that whether this is of any quality whatsoever is highly questionable as I sort of wrote it on autopilot. @_@ Would love to go back and fix it up and add some things in, but...so tired...and...need to post it before I go to bed...

            When analyzing data with groups, it is important to consider whether the groups are unbalanced—that is, whether there are different numbers of samples in each group. If this is the case, a particular type of analysis of variance (ANOVA) (see [Between Variation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/526920)) must be used. Types of ANOVA are divided into Type I, Type II, and Type III. The results of all three of these types will be the same if the groups are balanced. However, if they are unbalanced, only Type II or Type III should be used. Type II does not take interaction into account to the same extent that Type III does. In Type II, the analysis involves comparing models with an additional variable added to the model without that variable (for the [here, just two] groups involved), and then finally the gain by including the interaction in the model. In Type III, the analysis involves the benefit of adding a variable to a model of not only the other variable, but also the interaction term. In cases where there is a lot of interaction, this helps us avoid the possibility of the increase in the model’s helpfulness being due to the interaction rather than just the variable itself (but us not being able to tell because we are just looking at the variable overall, rather than “taking out” the interaction part). So if the interaction between the variables is not significant, do a Type II ANOVA. If the interaction is significant, do Type III. If the groups are balanced, all three types will turn out the same.

 

 

***  
  
  
            It had been, by Sherlock’s estimate (he could not tell precisely—shades drawn, so amount of light outside and therefore time of day unknown, extended amounts of sleep disorienting) sixteen days since John had returned. Seventeen was also a distinct possibility. His mobile was nowhere to be found.

            John was asleep beside him: that was exactly where John was supposed to be. John had returned and everything was right again.

            After the film had ended (and all the credits rolled, and the both of them taking immense interest in every grip’s name, John’s fingers threading through Sherlock’s hair in time with the lines disappearing off the screen, whether he realized it or not) there had been silence. The menu screen popped up once more and finally, finally John looked down at Sherlock, his face neutral and unreadable, a face Sherlock had nearly forgotten John had.

            “I think we have time for another,” Sherlock had finally said, doing his best to remain neutral as well, lest he scare John away, let John regret his choice to come over or his choice to invite Sherlock to lie in his lap or any of the other minute decisions John had made that brought him from there, from his flat, to here, to Sherlock’s, to 221B, to _theirs_.

            “Could we get some dinner first?” Ah, right, because people like John ate regularly. And Sherlock—Sherlock was, oddly, hungry as well. “Just some take-out?”

            “Yes, good idea,” Sherlock said. “I’ll call.” He started to stand but John instead pressed his own mobile onto Sherlock’s chest.

            “I came all the way here; you may as well use my phone, too,” John’s face melted into a half-smirk, and his eyes lit up, and Sherlock felt he was a sliver closer to being absolved.

            When the second film ended, it was late—late by John’s standards, anyway, Sherlock supposed. “You may feel free to stay,” he suggested, his voice small. “I won’t bother you. Your bed’s still…” and there he’d trailed off, because John’s bed had been unused (the blankets cleaned, yes, but the bed unused) since he had left to live with Mary. And before that—before that John’s bed had been _their_ bed.

            “Yeah,” John had said, biting his lip. “Yeah, I think I will, thanks.”

            Sherlock tried to mask any disappointment that overcame his features, because—well, because, obviously, John petting his hair didn’t mean they’d—it was a _lot_ of time, and, he supposed, a lot of pain and trying to forget and everything, for things to just go back to the way they had been eighteen years ago. Sherlock was ready because Sherlock was always ready and John was all Sherlock ever wanted, but John wasn’t, and that was okay. John probably hadn’t been spending a considerable portion of his waking hours thinking about this.

            “Thanks for…” John had started as he reached the stairs and turned back to Sherlock. “For, uh, taking my movie collection hostage.”

            And he had smiled, and Sherlock had smiled back, and that had been pretty good, hadn’t it, considering their recent track record, considering they hadn’t seen each other for three years, hadn’t left one another’s company on the best of terms.

            Sherlock had slept on the sofa so that he could be certain John wouldn’t sneak out in the morning without his knowing about it. John was well within his rights to do so, of course, but—but Sherlock should be allowed a chance, he thought. Some sort of last words.

            Instead, he woke to John trying to move his feet. “This is _my_ side, in case you forgot,” he explained as Sherlock’s eyes cracked open. “Inconsiderate arse.”

            All Sherlock could do was grin—and then, of course, he got a brilliant idea. He moved his entire body to John’s side and sat there with a gleam of challenge in his eye.

            Oh—maybe it wasn’t so brilliant. John pulled back suddenly, hesitant. Sherlock bit his lip. “Er…”

            But before he could say anything else, John had collapsed onto him, was wriggling into him, and Sherlock shivered and tried not to block out any part of it despite the immense sensory overload of it all, John’s shoulder blades against his chest, the warmth of his body seeping into Sherlock, the hairs of his arms brushing Sherlock’s arms, his arse—his arse, once so familiar and now again something new to explore, shape shifted slightly in age and all Sherlock wanted to do was _touch, touch, touch_ , but that was Not Good, not yet. “Live here, John,” he breathed instead, which was probably equally Not Good, but with the forceful way it had been drawn from his lungs he’d hardly had a choice in the matter.

            John stopped moving, stopped jostling, stopped playfully rubbing.

            “You don’t have to—we needn’t—just—come back. I’m alone. I’m lonely. I need you John,” he sputtered out, word after word, sentence after fragmented sentence, “It’s only you, no one else is ever going to live here, it’s just me, it’s just me and if you want it can be you, John. I’ll die alone or I’ll die with you.” Maybe it was a bit much. Maybe also Not Good. A bit forceful, probably sounded a bit suicidal. Probably sounded a bit overdramatic and a bit overromantic but that was what had become of Sherlock these days anyway, and he was allowed to say things about the Rest of His Life with regard to John, because, dammit, John had been over twenty years of his life already, and Sherlock knew when he needed something, and this was something he needed.

            “You’d better give me a good deal on the rent,” was all John said, serious, straightfaced, sober, deadpan, and Sherlock opened his mouth to make a suggestion but then John grinned and started wriggling again, wriggling and turning until one knee rested on either side of Sherlock’s legs, and John leaned over him. “You look like you think I might say no,” he observed in disbelief, and allowed his fingers to drift to Sherlock’s face.

            “It’s just as viable an answer as ‘yes,’ technically speaking.”

            “No it’s not, you sod,” John said, and that was all that was said of it for that day, and for the next day and the next. Sherlock went to John’s flat with him while he gathered a few of the essentials and got rid of the rest, and deduced things about John’s life—just nice things, easy things, just to hear John’s praise.

            Whenever they shared the sofa, they tumbled together in a pile of limbs and fed each other left over Thai and petted hair and once John had leaned over to peck Sherlock in on the cheek it all escalated, kissing and tongues and snogging and hands, and on the eighth night since John’s return, John suddenly stood up and walked over to the stairs and waited, and Sherlock remembered, and Sherlock followed, and they sprawled out on John’s bed instead and relearned one another’s bodies and it felt almost as if no years had passed at all, rather than eighteen, since the last time they had done so.

            And a week past that—or a week and a day—or a week and two days, or whatever it was, Sherlock was spread out on John’s bed again, John curled on his side with a foot jutting back to cover Sherlock’s own ankle. “’Morning,” John muttered, not looking at him but still knowing (because he was John, because he knew Sherlock better than anyone, even now) that he was awake.

            “So it is the morning, then. Seventeen,” Sherlock said.

            “What?”

            “Nothing.”

            “I’m a bit surprised,” John rolled over onto his back so that he could look Sherlock over. “You haven’t been out to work on a single case since I got here.”

            “As I said, criminals are dull these days,” Sherlock said, and then remembered, a twinge, a hint, that this had been a problem before, and added, “I have something much more interesting to study right now.”

            John beamed. “What’s that?”

            “The effects of my tongue on John Watson.”

            “That’s not going on your website, is it?”

            “Not unless you want it to.”

            “Being as I know about half the people who check it, how about not,” John chuckled.

            “I’d like to get the data collection underway as soon as possible,” Sherlock prompted.

            “Right,” John said, shrugging off the blanket he’d wrapped around himself. “Anything you need me to do?”

            “Please vocalize any feedback.”

            “On a scale of ‘that’s nice’ to ‘oh _, fuck_ ,’” John groaned in example, “as usual?”

            “As usual.”

            Or what usual there was to be had after so few days.

            “You know, I feel like you’re going to have a lot more data points about me than you do about anybody else.”

            Sherlock was taken aback. “Is that a…suggestion of some sort?”

            “Oh! No,” John said quickly, “no, nothing like that. Er. Just saying, you might want to—you know—take that into account. For all those important things you use this data for. Which is a lot, I’m sure, given how much you’ve already gotten.”

            “Yes, and much more is needed,” Sherlock crouched over John, breathing against his neck. He flicked his tongue out and ran it along the ridges of John’s ear.

            “Oh, _fuck_ ,” John breathed.

            “Noted,” said Sherlock.

            “Sherlock,” John pulled back from his mouth gently.

            “Yes?”

            “What do you think about moving to the country? Not now, just—later, sometime.”

            “Hmm. Where does that fall on our scale?” Sherlock smirked.

            He was expecting something playful and a return to their previous activities—but instead John pulled back farther and smiled shyly. “Someplace between ‘sentimental rubbish’ and ‘I love you, you stupid git.’”

            Sherlock took in slow breaths and then pulled John tight to him.

            “Now come on,” John mumbled into Sherlock’s shoulder. “I think I have some data to unbalance.”         


End file.
